Earth Defense Force 2025 - Review

The premise of EDF 2025, giant insects have crawled out from the depths of our planet to destroy us, so it's up to you to defend the good people of Earth. The concept is attractive and seems like a blast on paper, but the execution is a boring, try-hard mockery of what makes a video game great. When people bring up EDF they often times comment on it's whimsical over-the-top action, high flying acrobatics and city leveling gameplay. To this I say… Nope!

From the moment you start the game, it feels like it would be more at home in an arcade, demanding quarters for the two-dimensional experience. I may have even enjoyed this game a bit more if my PlayStation had dispensed tickets for each victory, which I could turn in for various snack and candies. Graphically this game squeaks by with little or no criticism in either direction, not good enough to be a positive, and not horrible enough to be a game breaking flaw. The characters and enemies look dated, but the environmental destruction is as detailed as it is entertaining. I often times had more fun blowing up buildings and crushing citizens than the implied defense of the Earth.

Sound on the other hand is a big issue. The sound effects are enjoyable, but the constant barrage of NPC dialog gets taxing within minutes. The voice acting is really bad, as if it's trying it's hardest to capture that B-movie essence of terrible. Being the only way the plot is explained, the whole game feels sloppy and badly directed. Screw cutscenes, those are too expensive. Instead, replace with long winded explanations of the plot shouted at you by ten NPCs at the same time. While trying to shoot bugs, this gets very annoying.

EDF 2025 is a run and gun third person shooter in which the player takes on the role of one of four classes of soldier. You press start, select a mission, then select your class and difficulty. It does have a veritable bounty of missions to play, but very little diversity from one to the next. Each consisting of open world shoot-outs that run about five to fifteen minutes each. Victories are rewarded with armor upgrades and weapon unlocks, the variety of which may be the only thing I liked about this game as there are hundreds of weapons and upgrades to collect. The unfortunate part is that you'd have to play a bad game to get them.

The EDF 2025 single player campaign consists of very few gameplay elements, while playing as different classes remedies this to a degree, the oversimplified point and shoot mechanic remains the same. Certain classes lack most silly conventional shooter standbys such as crouching, sprinting, or fine aim. Most classes only utilize about half the controls on the gamepad, meaning these gameplay features could have been added, but simply weren’t. I found myself the most entertained while utilizing the Air Raider’s many vehicles, though it's still not enough to for me to recommend this game to anyone that isn’t already a fan of the franchise. Although I regrettably did not, it seems like this game may be substantially more enjoyable with a friend using the Co-op campaign feature, as the repetitiveness of the single-player gets tiring very quickly.

A selling point of this game may be its pre-discounted retail price of fifty bucks, but even that seems a little much for the shallow experience of the game. I'm not saying I'm above shallow experiences, I'm only against a game making excuses for the corners it cuts, making things campy on purpose just doesn't work without the right amount of skill to pull it off. Wait a week or so for this game to lower in price if you need to pick it up.

The worst part about all of this is that the concept is awesome, the idea of blasting away at giant insects destroying the world is a hot ticket and it makes me wish it were better. I wanted this to be good, I was actually excited. It's upsetting that EDF tries so hard to capture what Starship Troopers did, once… (probably on accident) on purpose. Only to fall into the neighborhood blockbuster bargain bin. It's a short lived, arcade-y crapsterpiece. A lot of time went into making this game cheesy, and it shows, in the worst possible way.

This game just frankly isn't fun.

4/10 - Lacking

4s are hurting in quality. May have instances of fun that are overshadowed by major problems, technical or otherwise. They could be fun, but the issues may not make them worthwhile.

Being a multi-generational gamer, Daniel Galvan has been spreading his love for videogames for as long as he can remember. Whether onstage or off, he always seems to use games as a means of social unification amongst his peers. As a man of the people, Daniel strives to assist you with that sixty bucks in your pocket, understanding how easy it is to be tempted by hype. He's RPG aficionado with a loud mouth, proclaiming his disdain for chest-high walls and your favorite game. He's unafraid to call the kettle bad; and in a world where a nine hour ride through fantasy land costs almost a hundred dollars a ticket, it's important to have someone on your side.

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Think about this, if this game had been made up to "AAA standards" it probably wouldn't have gone past mission 20. and you never wouldve gotten to fight the dragons which researcher Ohara tells you are "evolved from giant insects." This game is a blast to play if you feel burned out by the slough of overproduced 8 figure development budget, advertisements up the ass games of today.